Where do Australians invest?

The rapid increase in international capital flows is one of the most significant developments in the global economy in recent decades. International portfolio diversification brings potential benefits to investors by offering investors the opportunity to insulate their portfolios from domestic risks associated with a down turn in local asset prices. The Australian investment environment has been progressively liberalised beginning with the removal of foreign exchange controls in 1987, and the movement to a floating exchange rate regime, other milestones included opening up the banking sector to foreign competition. Until recently, data on the level and geographical pattern of international portfolio investment has been inadequate. In recognition of this fact the International Monetary Fund (IMF) commenced in the mid nineties a pioneering comprehensive survey of the geographic structure of the foreign portfolios (equity and long-term bonds). The first publication covered the 1997 position of foreign portfolios held by the residents of twenty-nine countries, including Australia (IMF 2000), data from a follow up survey relating to 2001 international portfolio holdings was made available in 2003. In this paper we analyse the Australian data reported in the surveys by providing an analysis of the geography of international portfolio investment (equity and long-term securities). We find that countries most open to trade and hence most vulnerable to external shocks tend to diversify more by holding a higher percentage of their portfolios in foreign assets, compared to other countries. Australia appears to be quite outward looking in its investment behaviour, suggesting that Australian investors recognise the advantages of international diversification. However, a cross country analysis of the pattern of international portfolio investment indicates that the Australian portfolio investment position is not proportional to the overall economic or financial market size of the destination countries global standing, but instead matches Australian trade patterns surprisingly closely, here the US is over represented in the case of Australia's international portfolio investment position. Does this reflect a preference for investing in countries made familiar by trade and other relations? If so, this portfolio may imply sub-optimal strategies by Australian investors

Challenges and Opportunities for Trade and Financial Integration in Asia and the Pacific

This chapter analyzes the geography of Australia's international portfolio investment using the International Monetary Fund's coordinated Portfolio Investment Survey dataset. It provides some answers to the following questions: (a) why does the pattern of Australia's capital flows not match that of its trade flows; (b) which bilateral factors are responsible for explaining Australia's portfolio equity investment holdings; and (c) are cultural, informational factors important in explaining Australia's portfolio allocations; and (d) how regulatory and legal variables affect equity portfolio holdings? In general, the paper attempts to identify and quantify those determinants that drive Australia's overseas financial investments. In the aftermath of the recent global financial crisis it would appear that information related to those factors that influence investment decisions is now more urgent than at any time in the history of global funds management. More research into the determinants of a country's international investment position would therefore appear desirable, given that the number of relevant drivers appear to be highly volatile and of a country-specific nature.Australia, capital, portfolio, global financial crisis, IMF

Content Based Image Retrieval using Euclidean Distance Measure

In the rapid growing use of web world, users are using texts, audios, videos and images in huge amount. At the same time, need of fast retrieval is basic requirement of searching. The summarized content-based image retrieval (CBIR) wants competent mining of low level features like color, texture and shapes for indexing and speedy similar question picture recovery. Features are extracted from picture in the form of pixels-value. In this paper we examine the method of competent mining of color feature of picture. In our process, for the competent mining of picture, Euclidean distance measure technique is used. The projected process is experienced by means of Corel dataset

Studies on some Heterocyclic Compounds

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Lockdown-2020 and Livelihood of Migrant Women Workers in Jharkhand

The entire globe faces a very precarious situation during pandemic Covid-19. During national lockdown in India, it was hazardous for the migrant labourers and more unsafe for women migrant workers. They came across many livelihood challenges like: employment, nutrition, government support, societal security, health facility, etc. which were repeatedly underlined in numerous mass medianews. Therefore, to know the actual problems encountered by the women migrant returnees, this particular study was undertaken in Jharkhand state where most of women workers go on migration for earning. For the purpose, 41 women migrant returnees were randomly selected as respondents from 18 villages covering five blocks of the state. By the use of a survey schedule, data was collected in the arena of socio-economic outline, place of migration, reason of migration, sector of engagement, income, difficulties confronted and support need from government for livelihood enhancement which are pronounced in this study. View Article DOI: 10.47856/ijaast.2021.v08i7.00

A study on correlation between depression, fear of fall and quality of life in elderly individuals

Background: Fear of falling in elderly is a major cause of loss of independence, which has an effect on the physical function in elderly individuals. Depression is another important public health problem for older adults, because late life depression might have devastating consequences, such as an increase in mortality. QOL of older adults has become an important issue, because of demographic changes resulting from the ageing of the population. The goal of the study was to assess the depression and fear of fall which will provide further insights into the relationship between QOL, depression and fear of fall among elderly individuals in India.Methods: The sample consisted of 62 elderly people of age between 65 years to 75 years (mean=71.96, SD±5.92) were taken in the study. Depression was assessed using the 30-item geriatric depression scale (GDS), fear of falling was measured using falls efficacy scale (FES), QOL was assessed using the 26-item, World Health Organization Quality of Life, brief version (WHOQOL-BREF).Results: The data was analysed using Pearson co-efficient of correlation to examine the relationship between GDS, FES, and WHOQOL-BREF. The correlation co-efficient between GDS and FES was 0.5257 (p<0.05) and correlation coefficient between GDS and WHOQOL was 0.4372 (p<0.05).Conclusions: This study concluded that there was a significant association between the depression, fall efficacy, and QOL in the elderly people. This relationship has an important implication for the development of the rehabilitation programs that aim to improve the balance confidence and motivation will diminish its impact on QOL in elderly people

Financial burden of stroke on family and caregiver in India: a literature review

As life expectancy increases, India will face enormous socioeconomic burden to meet the costs of integrated rehabilitation of subjects with stroke. Caring for stroke patients leads to caregiver (CG) strain and financial burden. The CG burden is perceived differently in the Indian background depending on the society and culture. Caregiving stress has the potential to hamper rehabilitation of the patients and is of vital importance both as a research topic and the focus of clinical care. Cost and burden of informal care giving are high rural Indian community. Financial stress was prominent and common among the socioeconomically weaker division. The financial costs associated with family caregiving were a significant factor in caregiving burden, both for the male and female caregivers. Despite the high financial burden, limited recent studies have focused on costs associated with stroke in the India. Establishing total stroke-related costs is essential to evaluate and support the health economic research on stroke systems of care. Stroke care giving studies may help to better understand care giving impact, and also to find the most effective interventions to improve the quality of life of stroke patients and their caregivers, reduce the burden and depression of caregivers. Policies and programs to alleviate the financial burden and to provide social and financial support for these family caregivers are equally important for both family caregivers and their care receivers.

Intergenic sequence between Arabidopsis caseinolytic protease B-cytoplasmic/heat shock protein100 and choline kinase genes functions as a heat-inducible bidirectional promoter

In Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana), the At1g74310 locus encodes for caseinolytic protease B-cytoplasmic (ClpB-C)/heat shock protein100 protein (AtClpB-C), which is critical for the acquisition of thermotolerance, and At1g74320 encodes for choline kinase (AtCK2) that catalyzes the first reaction in the Kennedy pathway for phosphatidylcholine biosynthesis. Previous work has established that the knockout mutants of these genes display heat-sensitive phenotypes. While analyzing the AtClpB-C promoter and upstream genomic regions in this study, we noted that AtClpB-C and AtCK2 genes are head-to-head oriented on chromosome 1 of the Arabidopsis genome. Expression analysis showed that transcripts of these genes are rapidly induced in response to heat stress treatment. In stably transformed Arabidopsis plants harboring this intergenic sequence between head-to-head oriented green fluorescent protein and beta-glucuronidase reporter genes, both transcripts and proteins of the two reporters were up-regulated upon heat stress. Four heat shock elements were noted in the intergenic region by in silico analysis. In the homozygous transfer DNA insertion mutant Salk_014505, 4,393-bp transfer DNA is inserted at position 2517 upstream of ATG of the AtClpB-C gene. As a result, AtCk2 loses proximity to three of the four heat shock elements in the mutant line. Heat-inducible expression of the AtCK2 transcript was completely lost, whereas the expression of AtClpB-C was not affected in the mutant plants. Our results suggest that the 1,329-bp intergenic fragment functions as a heat-inducible bidirectional promoter and the region governing the heat inducibility is possibly shared between the two genes. We propose a model in which AtClpB-C shares its regulatory region with heat-induced choline kinase, which has a possible role in heat signaling